Giordano Da Lozzo

RIPEstat Mobile

3 min read

0 You have liked this article 0 times.
4

We developed a mobile app for iPhone and iPad that provides access to RIPEstat. The main purpose of this new front-end is to show information about Internet number resources in a way that is optimised for handheld devices. You can now find the RIPEstat mobile app in the Apple App Store.


In the figure below you can see the iTunes preview of the RIPEstat mobile application. If you click on the image you can go directly to the store and download the application for free. 

 

iTunes Preview

Reasons

Supporting information visualisation on smartphones is a common practice nowadays. However, charts and diagrams designed for large screens can not meet the specific requirements of those devices. That is why for instance on-line newspapers and other organisations have already changed their visualisation methods and formats to meet these requirements. On the other hand, such limitations go hand in hand with new technological opportunities that can be exploited to support user interaction. 

Data Sources

RIPEstat  is a tool that is providing lots of useful data about I nternet numbers  like IPv4 addresses, IPv6 addresses, Autonomous System numbers (AS number). More RIPE NCC data sets will be included in the near future.

RIPEstat Mobile accesses this data through a REST API publicly exposed on the web. In fact, RIPEstat shows both, graphical representation of resource information and the the raw data used to create these charts. This information is made available in different formats (json and yaml). The raw data of each RIPEstat module can been queried by means of a specific URL as shown in Figure 2 below.
 
  Data download link

Figure 2: Example data download link for the routing history module 

Application layout

On the iPad, the main window   of the application shows the control panel on the left and the content panel on the right hand side. The control panel provides an input field that can be used to specify an AS number or an IP address prefix. It also presents the user with a list of controls corresponding to the plugin the user is interested in. The content panel shows charts and graphs displaying the retrieved information in a graphical way (see below).

 

iPad Geo Location

Figure 3: iPad layout

On the iPhone those two panels cannot be displayed next to each other. Therefore the content panel will be shown on demand only (see Figure 4 below).

 

Figure 4: The two panels as shown on the iPhone (control panel on the left, content panel on the right hand side)

Development process

In order to make the tool meet users requirements, we decided to publish a first version of the application even though some features are still missing. By providing us feedback on the current functionalities and additional features you would like to see, you can help us set priorities and make this tool as useful as possible for your operations.

Please also note the Public Demo Sessions scheduled on monthly basis on webex. They offer you an easy way to keep up to date with improvements and new functionality.

0 You have liked this article 0 times.
4

About the author

Comments 4